Study Guide: Quiz 7
Quiz Preparation Tasks:
Your Answers and Notes
13
Life Is Ultimate Art
13.1
Life and Its Diversity: Ultimate Art or Ultimate Accident?
Life as Ultimate Art
The sentence, “O you, who look on this our machine, do not be sad that with others you are fated to die, but rejoice that our Creator has endowed us with such an excellent instrument as the intellect” was first spoken by what great scientist/philosopher?
Life as Ultimate Accident
What great observation did Charles Darwin make from nature as a result of his reading and voyage around the world?
List some organisms observed by Charles Darwin while reading and voyaging the world.
Charles Darwin’s view of the species was that populations of a species continually experienced new ____________ and continually became more ____________.
Charles Darwin believed that whole new species originated as a result of populations of the same species reproducing in two distinct, separate ____________ and responding to those ____________ in different ways.
Complete the following sentence describing how Darwin interpreted his observations of nature: Individuals within populations ____________ with each other for limited ____________; some of these individuals will ____________ better than others.
List 7 features of Enlightenment thinking.
The term ____________ represents a predictive theory of how a species might change with time, whereas the term ____________ assumes that nature can create whole new structures and organisms.
13.2
Can Life Originate without Artistry?
Evolution’s First Goal: The Smallest Cell
Compare Mycoplasma genitalium’s physical size with that of E. coli.
Compare Mycoplasma genitalium’s genome size (number of genes) with that of E. coli.
How was Mycoplasma genitalium discovered and what sorts of infection does it cause in humans?
Evolution’s Starting Materials: Small Geochemicals
Some have speculated that the origin of life occurred at geothermal vents. What is the problem with the amino acids formed near these vents?
Evolution’s Highest Hurdle: Creating and Storing Information
Some scholars have viewed RNA as the original site of information storage in the primitive cell. One advantage of this view is that RNA can both store ____________ and can act catalytically like a(n) ____________.
Could RNA have been the original site of information storage in the primitive cell? List some difficulties with this possibility.
One problem associated with evolving a system in which RNA bases code for ____________ acids is that the correct bonding of amino acids to tRNAs requires ____________ catalysis—mature proteins are needed to begin making the first proteins.
Evolution’s Final Challenge: Spatial Ordering of Biological Activity
State Francis Crick’s theory of directed panspermia.
13.3
Can Life’s Diversity Increase without Artistry?
The Gap to Be Bridged: Invention of Novel Complex Structures
Describe 1 popular evolutionary model for the origin of flight in vertebrates. Fliers must have evolved from non-fliers that ____________ and then glided down from ____________.
List the names of some component structures of a primary flight feather.
Given its precise shape, what is the role of the barbule in the primary flight feather?
How does preening behavior enable a bird to continue to fly successfully?
During the formation of a feather, a tube-like ____________ appears as a result of early induction events within the dermal layer of the wing surface.
What is a basic evolutionary advance needed to convert a down-like feather into a primary flight feather? The feather’s ____________ must be ____________ and reshaped to help support the bird’s weight.
Bridging the Gap I: Random Mutations in Primitive Feather Keratinocytes
What are some new mutations needed to generate appropriate structures for flight feathers? (A mutation that matches barbule ____________ to the space ____________ feather barbs.)
Bridging the Gap II: Natural Selection in Primitive Feather Keratinocytes
Distinguish the roles of mutation and natural selection in developing a better organism. Mutation ____________ the genes, and natural selection ____________ the genes.
Natural selection is an “expensive” process. Explain what this means in terms of the lives of the members of the population in which the selection is occurring.
In what sort of environmental situation is natural selection particularly limited in its effectiveness in preserving new favorable mutations?
Define the phrase “selection pressure.”
“Natural selection is cybernetically blind.” It does not ____________ the structural hierarchies it is required to construct.
Evaluation of the Naturalistic Hypothesis
Natural selection is unable to “see” a new useful biological function while protecting a different existing function. Is this a fair statement evaluating the naturalistic hypothesis? If not, what is a better one?
13.5
What Is the Product and Value of Evolution?
Mutations Harmful, Neutral, and Helpful
How does the design theorist arrive at the conclusion that most mutations occurring today are harmful? What does he or she assume to be true of the living thing in which the mutations are occurring?
The naturalist also comes to the conclusion that most mutations occurring today are harmful because the naturalist and the theist both assume that by now, the living thing is a collection of highly inter-related, well “crafted” systems. So, most mutations occurring today would not contribute to the process of ____________.
List 3 broad classes of mutations, each of which affects the evolutionary process differently.
Which class of mutations accumulate silently in the DNA, having no obvious effect on one’s ability to reproduce?
How would a design theorist define a beneficial mutation?
What is a Darwinist’s definition of a beneficial mutation?
What Does Nature Select?
What does stabilizing selection do among individuals of a population?
Which sort of selection can eliminate rare individuals whose sexuality is intermediate between male and female?
Directional selection moves a population phenotypically in a new ____________.
Which sort of selection has been used to generate a small increase in the number of bristles on the thorax of flies?
What problem arises when you desire to see if directional selection could move a population of primitive organisms toward long-term change?
What problem arises when you desire to see if directional selection could move a population of modern, internally-integrated organisms toward long-term change? (A seemingly good change in one direction, ____________.)
Adding in Revealed Truth
In the early pages of the Genesis record, how might the first of three stages of life history best be described? (Note the three vertical red arrows in Figure 13.63.)
Of the three stages of life history implied in the early pages of the Genesis record, which one appears least likely to involve any biological change in populations with time?
How might the third stage of life history implied in the early pages of the Genesis record best be described?
What phrase does Romans 8 use to describe modern living organisms?
